Often Irreverent, Mostly Rational Blog for Fans of the Toronto Blue Jays. One Day, We'll Be Perfect.

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

This is why we should take the term "MVP" behind the barn and shoot it dead

In just about every North American team sport, the top individual award is annually given to the player judged most valuable to his team.

Which begs the question: what the fuck do you mean by "valuable"?

Of course, everybody has their own particular view on what valuable means to them, so the voting for these top awards ends up being imbued with all sorts of nonsense and bunk that ha come to be a regular part of the process: You need to play for a contender, but you can't have too many other good players on your team (otherwise, how valuabe are you really?); you can't be a DH; you shouldn't be a pitcher; you'd be a better bet if you play a "premium" position...

It's all bollocks. The only thing that maintaining this whole "MVP" meme does is keep corpulent intellectually lazy hacks in sports columnists jobs. And really, how much value do they add to your everyday life?

Was Scoots "valuable", in as much as he was able to step in and provide above-replacement-level offense and good-sometimes-great defense at multiple positions? No doubt. And way back in November of last year, when the Jays went out and snagged him from Oakland, we figured that his position flexibility would be his greatest asset.

But seriously. Come on. Be real. If you want to say that Scutaro was the team's Unsung Hero, who might not get the headlines but who was important to keeping the season afloat, then fine. But don't go telling me that he and his .695 OPS were the key to keeping the Jays in the race.

Don't even try to compare his offensive totals to Alex Rios. Or if you insist, allow us:

Moreover, if you want to look at defensive flexibility, don't overlook the "value" of Rios' moving to centrefield for 59 games this year, which was as important to the Jays' fortunes as Scutaro's forays at short, second and third.

It's not that we don't appreciate Scutaro. We just wish that people would stop trying to be so cute about this and float out these stupid theories.

Fuck the MVP. Let's just call it "Player of the Year", and be done with it.

(Mind you, if you want to discuss Rios vs. Halladay vs. Scott Downs for Player of the Year, we're listening.)

It's gotta be the good doctor. This is a guy who (won't win, but) is in the discussion for the AL Cy Young.

Nothing against Scoots, but position versatility doesn't make you the team MVP.

Scotty Downs had a nailtacular season....but, and I'm just gonna throw this out there.....was he even way more valuable than Jesse Carlson?

Oh, and I got into a spectacular fistfight with a friend of mine who said Rios was having a shit season. Yeah, so no punches were actually thrown, but I pointed out that if even 5 of his (many) doubles cleared the fences, nobody would even think about dissing his year.

Beat me to it, I've been working on an "individual awards" are BS post for like a week that I was going to post up at some point. Ah well. Individual awards are BS. There, I said it. Having an MOP makes sense though, like in the CFL. The valuable thing is dumb. Like Morneau winning a few seasons ago. It was cool that he won, Go Canada Go and all that, but he had 2 other "MVP" candidates on his team already, so wouldn't someone who was the only good player on their team be more "valuable?".

If we have to choose for the Jays, I say give it to Halladay and call it a day. The pitching has been the strength, and he's been the best pitcher.

It would be helpful if you could link an article, because I think this is just recycled old news.

I'm assuming this is the same talk that came from Halladay's all-star break comments where he said he wanted to win - which the media jumped all over and tried to spin as Halladay wanted out - which forced Halladay to clarify his comments by repeating that yes, he wanted to win, but he wanted to win in Toronto above all else.

I don't know about you guys, but I'm fine calling Marco Scutaro as the Jay's MVP for this year.

Why? Because Roy Halladay is such an obvious and boring choice, Alex Rios had a disappointing season compared to what we expected him to do, and no one else really stands out. And that's the driving point - no one really stands out, so why not Scoot?

The fact that Marco played everywhere and anywhere makes the MVP call a "fun choice". It wasn't meant to be taken so so seriously (or else Halladay would get the nod).

And some Cubs fan would argue that Mark DeRosa is their MVP. And basically, Scutaro is a poor man's DeRosa. BTW, guess who was hitting cleanup for the second best team in baseball yesterday?

dave - where'd you find the game? TSN2? Never thought to check it. I worked late last night and came home during the 8th, and promptly screamed at my TV when I saw fucking PRESEASON hockey on both TSN and RSN.

MVP: JP Ricciardi...Why? He is the most vile person. Wilner calls Mussina bad, howsabout we call JP a bad person. He manages to keep this team mired in mediocrity, calls out other team's players AND is so full of shit his eyes are brown.